Reviews

The Children's Bach by Helen Garner

tashabye's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

A slow and sometimes disjointed read. The premise sounded interesting and I love that it is set in Australia in the 80s but overall it took me a while to get through as I was just not invested in any of the characters.

 Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for a chance to review the eARC edition in exchange for a fair and honest review. 

tellthebeees's review against another edition

reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Short, simple sentences create a short, devastating novel about the effects of marriage in a strangely prescient novel from the 1980s. Slightly too sparse- Normal People for Gen X, if you will- but weirdly devoid of any human sentiment. Maybe I'm too American and eager for drama and explosive conversations in a novel about a marriage-in-crisis, but the muted crescendo will definitely work for some.

sesealyah's review against another edition

challenging relaxing tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

kegifford's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Captivating. Great writing. I'm so glad to have come upon Garner--what an original voice. 

pnwlisa's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

amothiel's review

challenging emotional funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.25

iheartcoffee's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

devin_mainville's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

voyager78's review against another edition

I’ll be the voice of dissent here. The writing style is just too difficult for my brain to handle. I feel like I’m not smart enough for this book. It feels like the author took a mosaic apart, threw the tiles in a pile and I’m supposed to make sense of them and see the whole picture. I need a more cohesive, linear approach to storytelling. That’s just me and my tired brain.

nick_jenkins's review against another edition

5.0

Oh my gosh, this book!
Near the end, Philip, a guitarist, gives advice to an aspiring songwriter:

Take out the clichés. Everybody knows ‘It always happens this way’ or ‘I went in with my eyes wide open’. Cut that stuff out. Just leave in the images. Know what I mean? You have to steer a line between what you understand and what you don’t. Between cliché and the other thing. Make gaps. Don’t chew on it. Don’t explain everything. Leave holes. The music will do the rest.

This is, of course, a self-description of Garner's stylistic intentions, and a true assessment of her achievement in this "jewel" of a book, as Ben Lerner names it in his introduction.

When I say The Children’s Bach is a jewel, I don’t only mean to offer a cliché of praise, although it is beautiful, lapidary, rare; I also mean that Garner captures the alternating transparency and opacity of others. The point of view moves rapidly but somehow seamlessly among various characters, focusing on and through them, before it alights on someone else. But this ability to depict multiple perspectives is cut with a sense of how little access we really have to other minds and motivations; Garner’s prose is a singular mixture of intimacy and distance. Indeed, we often learn about her characters by how quickly they characterise or mischaracterise each other.

This is a perfect description of her characters and how she handles them; one of the few writers who is equally good at this toggling between intimacy and distance, between a gross clunkiness of caricature and an unfathomably delicate, even oblique incision into the bafflingly complex circuitry of desire, shame, and confusion that each character carries through the novel is Christina Stead, coincidentally Garner's compatriot.

The character of Dexter in particular reminds me of the father from The Man Who Loved Children, but where Stead generally tended to sprawl and dilate to get the effects of alternation and contrast for her characters, Garner accelerates through the turn from blunt surfaces to lucid depths. Hers is a technique of concision, of dropping out the middle and slamming opposite charges together. The constant sensation is of metapsychological whiplash, of trying to catch up with subtext, with nuance, with the tacit understandings and half-conscious communications of people you only just met. It is a wild and a delicious ride.